


Are You Yuuri Katsuki?

by duchessof221b



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Breaking the internet, M/M, Social Media, Unwanted attention, ice skating fandom, parody videos, phichit wanted to be a vine star, vine is dead, viral videos, yuuri is secretly addicted to his phone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 10:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13292700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessof221b/pseuds/duchessof221b
Summary: There was, logically, no reason for it to catch Yuuri’s attention, especially not in a personal way. He had no reason to suspect that anything was unusual about it. But Yuuri knew. Without knowing anything about this video, really, he knew what was bound to happen. Yuuri clicked play.





	Are You Yuuri Katsuki?

**Author's Note:**

> Note: in this fic I chose to ignore the fact that Victor was planning to continue competing. In this story, he is solely Yuuri's coach.  
> Forever thanking Kashoku (Kashoku-Sinpai on tumblr) for the very needed beta work.

When the six-second video starts, there's a smiling Asian boy with black messy hair and big dark sunglasses standing in an empty parking lot.  His jacket is open hanging loosely on his shoulders, and he’s holding a phone in his hands grinning wildly at the camera. He's jumping restlessly up and down while a voice of a person off-screen is saying, _"Oh-my-goodness, is that Yuuri Katsuki in an alleyway?"_

"No, it's not!" The boy says while shaking his head and immediately turning around, his back now facing the camera.

_"Oh-my-goodness, I think it is!"_ The off-screen voice is heard again. _"I think it is, oh-my-goodness!"_

Then, the boy looks over his shoulder at the camera laughing and starts running away, now out of frame. The video ends.

When the video was first uploaded by the Vine user _Phichit_Chu_ , back when the app itself was in its most glorious times, the name 'Yuuri Katsuki' was almost completely anonymous. The short video never got too much attention, especially being buried under countless of other Vines, Musical.ly videos, Snapchat stories, Instagram selfies, and tweets all under the username of the young Thai skater.  

Only a couple of years later, with one silver medal around his neck and a golden ring on his finger following the publically relationship with a well-known living legend, the name Yuuri Katsuki suddenly wasn't as anonymous as it used to be.  It was then that someone dug just deep enough within social media to find that one random Vine video.

Yuuri himself was more of a watcher when it came to social media. He would browse, like, and probably comment on his friends' pictures and statuses, but he barley uploaded any content himself. He was used to getting notifications from fans as well as likes and tags on posts on the various social apps. So, at first, when Yuuri was tagged by both fans and friends on that one specific old Vine uploaded over and over by countless of users in many social networks, he was surprised that the old, pointless video suddenly found its way back from the grave yard of the deep web. After watching the dumb video he might have sulked for a moment, but then he calmed himself easily.

_“It's silly, not even funny really, and it's not like Vine is a thing anymore,”_

Time passed with days turning into weeks. Yuuri's mind was centered on the upcoming skating season and he was determined to work hard with Victor, even harder than last season. After a morning run and a warm up on the ice, Victor worked with Yuuri on his short program. A while later they decided to take five, Yuuri taking a moment to drink some water and grabbed his phone since he noticed a message from Phichit.

_P: Hiii Yuuri! have you seen your new video? its everywhere! like really everywhere. Pls tell me you’ve seen it ^^_

Yuuri’s heart skipped a beat. After that video of him skating Victor's program went viral last year his life changed forever. While he couldn’t say it wasn’t for the best, the concept of something personal suddenly becoming a public domain, an entertainment for everyone to see with no possible way to control it, still made Yuuri feel exposed and scared. His eyebrows rose when he noticed Phichit was suddenly typing again.

_P: you haven’t seen it huh... oh my goodness..._

With that, Yuuri immediately threw his phone back to his backpack as if it was on fire. He tried to think, but realized he had no idea what could possibly be on the new viral video of him. Victor already posted many short videos of Yuuri’s new programs for the upcoming season on Instagram so there wasn’t anything exclusive about that, and he was almost one-hundred percent sure he and Victor never filmed any naughty videos. Almost.

"Yuuri, is everything ok?" Yuuri heard Victor’s voice and turned around. When it came to fight or flight, Yuuri choses flight almost every time.

 "Y-yes,” He stuttered and stepped back into the ice, drowning his growing anxiety in the sweat of spins and jumps.

The well-earned lunch they had at the coffee shop next to Victor’s apartment almost made him forget about the texts and video altogether. Victor was holding his chicken sandwich in one hand and browsing his phone with the other thinking loudly about what video from the practice he should upload to his account, and Yuuri was digging with his fork in his cold pasta salad when Victor's voice suddenly piped down. Yuuri looked up and saw Victor staring at his phone with his mouth hanging open, the corners of his lips curved to something that was almost a smile. Yuuri couldn’t see anything because the phone faced Victor, but he could hear very clearly.

_"Umm, excuse me,"_ a tiny voice came from Victor’s phone, _"Are you Yuuri Katsuki?"_

Another, quieter voice, _"No!”_

The other voice responded, _"Oh, sorry. Bye."_

Yuuri’s eyes widened. His breathing had stopped and a chill ran down his spine. Yuuri shot his hand forward and took Victor’s phone from his hand causing the other man to almost drop his sandwich. Yuuri stood quickly, his chair pushing back with a shrieking noise.

It was _the_ video, of course. The one Phichit had been talking about.

First, Yuuri pressed the 'back' button and just as he thought it went back to Phichit's and Victor’s chat conversation. Phichit must have sent Victor the link since Yuuri refused to check his phone for hours. He clicked 'play' on the video. It was a three-second footage and Yuuri had to watch it a few of times to process what he was seeing. By the third time, Victor's laugh was impossible to hide.

The video started with a view of what seemed to be an isle in a department store. The camera moved towards a guy opposing it dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt with a blue plaid jacket tied to his hips.

_”Umm, excuse me? Are you Yuuri Katsuki?"_ Asked a voice off-screen.

The guy stops walking and turns around. He has dark messy hair and large blue eye-glasses. _"No!"_ He says, expression surprised and a little indignant.

_"Oh, sorry. Bye_ ,” Says the voice off-camera while the view shifts back, and the video ends.

"This is not funny!" Yuuri said while trying not to scream.

"I'm sorry Zolota. It is, in fact, very funny," Victor said with a wide smile.

"First of all, not every Asian guy with glasses looks like me," he continued angrily, "That's pretty racist, now that I think about it. It's all because of this stupid old vine. They are mocking it, have you seen it-"

"I did!" Victor said and made a snorting sound Yuuri never thought Victor was capable of.

"I can't believe it! Even you," he whispered and crossed his arms over his chest. Couldn’t he see how humiliating it was? Why was Phichit playing along and spreading the video? Not only was the video not funny, but Vine was dead. People needed to get over it and move on.

Yuuri took his phone from its resting place at the corner of their table and started typing furiously, thumb flicking through the letters as fast as a bullet.

_Y: This is not funny. I hate it & I can't believe you just sent us this link._

Phichit replied within a second.

_P: im sorry yuuri! Q///Q I thought you'll like it as much as I did. It's a funny vid and it just brought me back so many memories from our time in Detroit._

_P: sorry again! TT-TT_

Victor finally managed to stop laughing and stood up like Yuuri did. Reaching out to take his boyfriend’s phone away he said, "There is nothing in this video as dramatically humiliating as you think."

"This is not what you said after the video comparing your hairline through the years came out," the Japanese whispered harshly under his breath.

"That one stings, Yuuri!” He whined and the younger man tried not to smile. Victor took a step forward took him into his embrace.

 "I'm not going to tell you you're over reacting because this is not what you want to hear right now, but you know it,” Victor told him. "Just think about it this way, today the internet is interested in mocking you, tomorrow it's going to be something else completely. For now, we are working hard so the next time the internet will talk about you it'll be because you are the new Grand Prix Final winner."

Victor was not entirely wrong: time passed, the rage was forgotten as the heat around the video was replaced with other topics and trends to poke and Yuuri practiced hard. After a successful qualification, he made it to the podium on his first round of the Grand Prix competition in Skate America. Silver again, but that’s ok. It was just the warm up.

Next followed the Skate Canada event. Yuuri made it to the podium yet again with the bronze medal shining down his chest this time. Chris took the silver. The Japanese man was disappointed as he was still aiming for the gold and this time he was not ashamed to admit it out loud. Yuuri was determined to continue his strong and long practices, and it was only when Victor and Yuuri made it back to Russia to continue their training for the Grand Prix final that something popped up again on the internet.

It was Yuuri’s rest day and he wanted to spend it in front of his computer to binge watch a mini-series or two. The Japanese man turned on his laptop, put in on the kitchen counter, and reached for the coffee machine to serve himself a cozy cup of caffeine he didn’t really need.  Before he even had a chance to start an episode, while the coffee was purring from the machine to his cup, Yuuri used the moment to check Twitter on his phone. He knew better then to look at the notifications from his fans, but Yuuri noticed the video that Chris shared on his account. There was no caption attached but a crying of joy emoji. Yuuri stared at the tiny frozen preview picture of the 13 seconds long video with a blank expression. The preview picture showed Chris wearing his round eyeglasses over his nose with his free-skate costume on, eyebrows arched in a surprised expression. He took his cup and drank the whole thing in one sip without adding any milk of sugar. Bitterness spread inside his mouth.

There was, logically, no reason for it to catch Yuuri’s attention, especially not in a personal way. He had no reason to suspect that anything was unusual about it. But Yuuri knew. Without knowing anything about this video, really, he knew what was bound to happen. Yuuri clicked play.

First, it was Yuuri from all those years back smiling with his sunglasses at the camera.

_"Oh-my-goodness, is that Yuuri Katsuki in an alleyway?"_

When the scene ended it followed the other video in the department store.

  _“Umm, excuse me? Are you Yuuri Katsuki?"_

The video continued with a different footage this time. It was Chris in his free-skate costume with his eyeglasses and his silver medal resting on his lap. The blond was sitting on an arm chair in what seemed to be the Skate Canada arena, head tilted down and eyes fixed on his phone.

" _Excuse me? are you Yuuri Katsuki?_ " Asked a voice off-screen.

Chris' expression was one of surprise at first. _"No,"_ he says, brows arching up. Then his face lit up with a meaningful smile, _"But I can be."_

The video was over. Yuuri clicked and the phone screen went dark at once. He rose both his hands from his sides to his head and spent a few moments concentrating on steady breathing. People not only refused to let this Vine die, they kept adding burn material to the shit-show fire. At first, the internet just mocked the old video and he couldn't blame anyone because it was embarrassing indeed. Then, someone actually made a parody. Asian guy with similar glasses in a department store. After that, someone pretended that it was possible to confuse Chris with Yuuri. Maybe they were meaning the glasses, again, and maybe it was about the silver medal since he himself had got quite a few in a row. It didn't matter that he was actually able to reason what was happening. Yuuri still felt hurt. It still felt, in fact, dramatically humiliating. 

With this, he decided to put on his sneakers and pulled up his hoodie over his head. He needed to move, to clear his mind, to practice. When he went outside and started moving along the highway the rain was not an obstacle. Not even for a moment. His legs were tapping on the puddles splashing in all directions.

It took barely ten minutes for Victor to get to him with his bike.

"You’ve seen the video," Victor shouted loudly over the rain.

"It's ok!" Yuuri shouted back, eyes still on the road ahead of him.

"I have a new idea! Something to motivate you over the disturbing attention-"

"I said it was ok, Victor! I mean it!"

"Oh, but wait! You’ll want to hear me out!" Victor suddenly stopped paddling his bikes and kicked the ground with his leg to stop.

The sudden cut-off surprised Yuuri and made him stop running at once. He looked at Victor's blue eyes for a long moment, breathing heavily, and then took off the hoodie from his head.

Shortly after the Grand Prix Final, one single piece of content appeared under Yuuri Katsuki's twitter account. Within hours the tweet got thousands of likes and shares, and it took less than 24 hours for the content to earn its own article on Buzzfeed, to appear on Perez Hilton's blog, and to spread to every single social media platform there was. The original tweet crossed the 5 million mark even without the fans re-uploading it to their own profiles and pages. The video broke its sports-fandom limits and was the only thing people were talking about for the next few days. No one thought it was silly. Actually, people were calling it the finest piece of self-humor of the year. Yuuri wasn't really sure why. It was beyond his understanding, but he was at peace. He found his closure.

The six-second video started with a shot of pink Cadillac's backdoors.

_"Um, excuse me,"_ a voice off-screen said and the frame quickly moved to the side of the vehicle.

The front door of the car was open and a dark haired Asian guy with eye-glasses was sitting in the driver seat with one hand on the wheel and the other hand pressed to the corner of his seat. A gold medal hung on his chest shining in the bright winter sun against his blue coat.

_"Are you Yuuri Katsuki?"_ The voice asked, rolling his ‘R’s.

The guy chuckled, shrugging while shaking his head and responding, _"Ha-ha, no!"_

The video ends.


End file.
